the soul of a man

yesterday was the anniversary of the death of blind willie johnson.

horsemouth has started oscar wilde’s the soul of man under socialism - now this is usually portrayed as oscar wilde’s rejection of communism but in fact horsemouth finds it an able warning against the authoritarian socialist path. now (of course) you would probably not buy your socialism from oscar the glib (so much to answer for) but from some heavy germans.

and yet there are moments when oscar’s prose does it,

 ‘there are a great many people who... are compelled to do the work of beasts of burden ... to which they are forced be the peremptory, unreasonable, degrading tyranny of want. these are the poor... from their collective force humanity gains much material prosperity... but it is only the material results that it gains.’

the problem for horsemouth, and he’s a shoulder to the wheel kind of guy, is how do you get there from here. for horsemouth if you’re going to start a revolution (or a fight for that matter) you’d better be able to win it because you don’t want to see yourself and all your friends murdered or thrown in jail. your best bet is getting organised (a party/ a gang) and before you know it your old authoritarian thoughts and habits have returned. all ways round it that horsemouth has seen involve some fantasy of ‘being’ the commune (the workers, the ‘people’).

horsemouth has (in any event) retired from the active end of this sort of nonsense. he would like to see a better world but he doesn’t expect it to come. it is a grey morning but the weather forecast says it will pick up (and the sun may even shine through).

the day before yesterday horsemouth walked up through the valley of the agapemonites to walthamstralia where he raided the bookshops (emerging with wilde’s de profundis - one squid scope) and had an ice cream. later he sunbathed in the garden, watched the news (depressing as sin), and then watched grim prairie tales. online he found a book by the grand daughter of one of the agapemonite founders.